kindness

Ethics Hero: Jeffrey Warren

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

You’ve probably heard or read the story by now.

Wait! Maybe he’s Cherokee!

17-year-old Jeffrey Warren rose to accept the $1,000 college scholarship awarded by the local Martin Luther King Senior Citizens Club during seniors night at Martin Luther King High School in Riverside, California, and provoked both laughter and awkward gasps. He was obviously white—as white as Elizabeth Warren—and the scholarship for intended for black students, though Warren didn’t know that when he applied.

Later, Warren decided to give back the money. His family said they didn’t want the African-American women who gave out the award to be foiled in their attempt to help young black scholars, and that it was the right thing to do. I would say that it was a right thing to do, and showed exemplary kindness, compassion, empathy, generosity, charity and altruism. Jeffrey had every right to accept the money. The Club’s requirements were vague, and did not make it clear that he was not eligible when he applied. If he and his parents had wanted to make a political and philosophical statement about the hypocrisy of a race-based scholarship in the name of Martin Luther King, this was an ideal opportunity, and an argument could be made that this would have been the “right” thing to do as well, if not “righter.” Continue reading →

A Golden Rule Tutorial By Martin Short

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

Boy, Kathy Lee, are you lucky!

Visiting the late version of the Today Show to plug a film, actor/comedian Martin Short was not expecting to have to answer awkward questions about his wife, Nancy Dolman, who, after all, has been dead since she succumbed to ovarian cancer two years ago. Then again, he might have, since his host, the flighty Kathy Lee Gifford, could not reasonably be expected to uphold the basic standards of professional journalism, which include knowing whom you are interviewing and avoiding mortifying one’s guests. Sure enough, Gifford left her index cards to wax enthusiastic about her “good friend’s” marriage, as if she and the Shorts regularly hung out together. Kathy Lee said, “He and Nancy have one of the greatest marriages of anybody in show business. How many years now for you guys?” Short, who is a pro, managed to conceal his discomfort and pleasantly responded, “We … for 36 years.”

Gifford then went into full Kathy Lee mode, which resembles a boa constrictor squeezing a goat.  “But you’re still, like, in love?” she asked. Short responded, “Madly, madly in love.” Continue reading →

Ethics Heroes: Seniors at Lexington (Ky) Catholic High School

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

The fun prom…in the parking lot.

When Lexington (Kentucky) Catholic High senior Hope Decker, 18 tried to take sophomore Tiffany Wright, 16, to the school’s senior prom as her date, school officials told the couple that they would not be admitted, because their unholy same-sex coupling violated the Catholic Church’s teachings. Defiant, the couple tried to enter the school’s gymnasium that night, where the prom was held, but as promised, their tickets were refused. So their fellow students held an impromtu protest prom outside the official one, in the parking lot. They played music from their cars, and set up a table for refreshments.

“We had a wonderful night, and we were surrounded by true friends,” Wright said. “I’ll remember it for the rest of my life.”

Here is what else she will remember for the rest of her life: Continue reading →

Ethics Quiz: The Conundrum of the Crushed Crab

/ Jack Marshall / 18 Comments

“OH THE HUMANITY! I mean…well, you know what I mean…”

A good friend related this scene on Facebook, and asks if she is losing her mind:

She was shopping at the open air fish market on Maine Avenue in Washington, D.C. when a vendor, whose cart was full of live blue crabs, had an escape attempt. One of the crustaceans made a dash for freedom, only to be squashed by the wheel of the cart.  “I screamed and then burst into tears,” she wrote. “It was awful. I tried to save the little guy.”  Then she realized that people were laughing at the drama, thinking it was a comedy….laughing at the crab getting crushed and at my friend for being upset by it.

She wrote: “Now I know he was destined for a pot of boiling water. But somehow – seeing that little creature getting run over was just too much for me. I know someone was going to eat that crab – but do we have to be cruel?”

Your Post-Mothers Day Ethics Quiz for crab mothers everywhere:

Were the laughers cruel, or merely recognizing a funny scene when they saw one? Continue reading →

The Monsters, the Baseball and the Kid

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

“WAAA! I wanted that ball! By the way, where am I?”

I skipped this ten-minute controversy from last month, but I think it was worth mentioning from several ethics angles, so consider this catch-up.

Rangers fans Sean Leonard and Shannon Moore were at a Texas Rangers-Yankee game a few weeks ago when a  game ball was tossed into the stands by Texas’s Mitch Moreland. They caught it and gleefully posed for the TV cameras, which also caught a three-year old boy crying hysterically next to them. Immediately, the couple was vilified far and wide, on TV, in blogs and on radio talk shows ( Business Insider called them “The Monsters Who Made A Little Boy Cry”)  for taking the ball and not giving it to the child. The main accuser  who sparked all this hatred was Yankees broadcaster Michael Kay, who told his radio audience that the couple was taunting the unhappy boy.

Outrageous, all right, but Kay, not the couple. Kay’s description of what occurred was speculative and even fanciful, and for other commentators to commence vilifying the two fans without knowing anything about them, or even why the child was crying, was frighteningly unfair, irresponsible and cruel. Yes, you too can be caught on camera and turned into a national punching bag! Later, we discovered that…. Continue reading →

Ethics Article of the Week: George Will On His Son’s Birthday

/ Jack Marshall / 15 Comments

Happy birthday, Jon.

Conservative columnist George Will has only occasionally mentioned his Down Syndrome-inflicted son Jon in his columns, but when he has, it has provided an extra dimension to Jon’s father, who usually comes across in print and on TV as cynical, dour, and archly intellectual. Today is Jon’s birthday, so Will devotes the full column to him, his challenges, and, when all is said and done, ethics.

It’s a beautifully written piece, as Will’s columns often are, and a tender one. More importantly, however, it is an essay that should provoke thought, beginning with the fact that the only reason Will wrote this column is that he and his wife chose, 40 years ago, to do what 90% of all parents informed that their gestating child has Down Syndrome refuse to do: allow the child to be born.

The column is here

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Graphics: Richmond Times-Dispatch

My Field of Dreams

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

Yesterday, an Off-Broadway musical closed that I launched on its remarkable run nearly 12 years ago. The show had productions in four states, D.C. and London; it had over 450 performances; it became the cornerstone of one very talented (and very nice) actor’s career, and an important opportunity for several others. It gave a dear friend immense pleasure, satisfaction and recognition in the final decade of his life, and probably saved my theater company from bankruptcy. Most important of all, perhaps, is that it entertained thousands of people. If I got bopped by a trolley tomorrow, the show would undoubtedly stand as one of the major accomplishments of my entire strange, eclectic, under-achieving life.

And yet…feeling good about the unlikely saga of the show, now that it has finally (probably—it has risen from the dead before) seen its last audience, takes considerable effort for me, and has from the beginning. My satisfaction is more intellectual than emotional, because I know that I personally benefited less from the show in tangible ways in proportion to my contribution to it than anyone else involved. Although I restructured the script, re-wrote, added and cut lines, wrote new lyrics to one song and added two others to the show, including the finale, I’m not credited as a co-auther. I own no part of the property, and never received a dime in compensation. Those closely connected with the original production know all of this, but the extent of my role in the creation and success of the show has been invisible to audiences for over a decade. Continue reading →

Comment of the Day: “Ethics Quiz: The Case of the Abandoned Prom Date”

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

Well, I always wanted to be like Clint; not in this way, perhaps, but I'll take what I can get...

Jordan Gray posted the best of the counter-arguments to my resolution of an iron-fisted couples-only policy imposed on a high school junior whose feckless date left her with two tickets, an unworn dress, and a broken heart.

You almost have me convinced, guys. Maybe tgt is right, and I’m just telling the kids to get off my lawn…

Here is Jordan’s Comment of the Day on the post,  “Ethics Quiz: The Case of the Abandoned Prom Date”;

  “What makes proms special is that they are couples affairs, not just another dance.”

First, there are plenty of ways to enjoy the prom without being part of a “couple”. I’ve heard of singles going as groups, for example, or even being picked up by an existing couple who are more concerned with having fun than manufactured romance. Continue reading →

Ethics Quiz: The Case of the Abandoned Prom Date

/ Jack Marshall / 42 Comments

Today’s Ethics Quiz takes on the ethics of high school proms.

Oh, suck it up, girl!

Amanda Dougherty, a high school junior, had a prom date, tickets, an expensive dress and dreams of romance, glamor and life-long memories when her date, for reasons unrevealed to us, had to bale out of the big event too late for Amanda to find a replacement beau. She planned on attending stag, and was shocked when officials at Archbishop John Carroll High School told her she was not allowed to go without a date according to Archdiocese of Philadelphia policy. The office of Catholic Education explained that the school has “numerous dances and events throughout the year where dates are not required, but we view the prom as a special social event where a date is required to attend.”

“She’s been excited (about prom) for a couple of years,”  Jack Dougherty, Amanda’s father, told the CBS affiliate in Philly. “She went out around Christmas looking for her dress.” Amanda took a feminist line of attack. “For them to say we’re not good enough to go without a guy next to us, that’s kind of sickening,” she said.

Your Prom Season Ethics Quiz is this: Is the school heartless and overly rigid, or is its decision the right one? Continue reading →

Internet Betrayal: The Dork, The Spreadsheet, and the E-mail Avenger

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

If someone sends you an obnoxious, arrogant, idiotic or otherwise embarrassing e-mail, the ethical thing to do is to tell the individual what’s wrong with it, and perhaps save them from future embarrassment. The principle is simple: The Golden Rule. When you send a private message to someone and pour out your heart, empty your skull, vent your spleen, or otherwise express things you probably should have slept on and moderated in the clear light of day, you don’t want your correspondent to use the internet as a weapon against you and introduce you to millions at your worst. It is a terrible, cruel, indefensible thing to do…to anyone. Continue reading →